In Which Connor Is Sick

Well, it turns out it was a good thing that I kept Connor home from school yesterday, because he's not feeling so hot right now.

He slept in until almost 9:30 this morning, and when I finally went in to wake him up it was obvious from his flushed cheeks and quivering lip that something wasn't right.  "Are you feeling sick?" I asked him, stroking his hot forehead.  He nodded and closed his eyes again. 

I took his temperature.  He was running at about 99.9-- just high enough for me to know that he wasn't just feeling the effects of yesterday.  So I figured we'd have another pajama day today.  I picked him up, took him into the living room and snuggled in with him on the couch, expecting to just take it easy with him all day and hoping that we wouldn't see any excitement.

Connor didn't have any congestion or tummy troubles, so I wasn't expecting any problems there.  What I was really worried about was the fever, because while it was pretty low in the morning, if his temperature spikes sharply he can have febrile seizures.

Sure enough, around one in the afternoon his temperature began spiking, and within a three hour time period he had four seizures-- one of them after we'd used the Ativan.  The highest his temperature got was 102.9 before the Tylenol really kicked in.  The seizures all lasted between one and three minutes, and they varied-- a couple were his typical pass-out-and-stop-breathing, and a couple involved violent shaking and his eyes rolling back into his head.  The only tonic-clonic seizure he's ever had was a febrile seizure, so I'm not surprised by the change.  Currently he's hovering around 101.5, and I'll be setting my alarm to give him a dose of Tylenol every four hours during the night so that it doesn't have a chance to spike again.  The last thing we need is for him to start another run of seizures at two in the morning. 

If he does start having another series of seizures (whatever the time) we'll be taking him into the Emergency Room, because we've pretty much exhausted what we can do for him here at home and his seizures are still causing him to quit breathing.  Normally I would never take a kid above the age of three months running a measly 102 degree fever to the hospital, but Connor is kind of a special case.  The kid can go downhill really quickly and we'd like to prevent that if we can. 

Connor has been gifted with a surprisingly good immune system for a kid in his circumstances, and so he doesn't get sick very often.  When he does, though, it can take weeks for him to get better.  If his fever isn't going down by tomorrow afternoon, we'll probably be making an appointment to take him in and make sure he has a virus and not a UTI or an ear infection.  Connor only has one kidney and he's had at least one UTI in the past, so we have to be careful about making sure that's not what's going on. 

I hope the little guy feels better tomorrow.

~Jess